How NBA Star Chris Paul's Love Of Bowling Helped The PBA Reach A New Audience

Chris Paul didn’t start off the NBA season as he would have liked. The Houston Rockets point guard missed 17 consecutive games due to a strained left hamstring before returning to the lineup last month. He’s improved as of late, scoring at least 20 points in each of his past three games and tallying a season-high 17 assists in Saturday’s 118-112 victory over the Golden State Warriors.

Still, even as Paul, 33, recovered from the injury, he took time last month to compete in the 10th annual CP3 PBA Celebrity Invitational in the Houston suburb of Conroe, Texas. The event, where athletes, celebrities and bowlers from the Professional Bowlers Association compete against each other, took place on Jan. 17. It was televised on Super Bowl Sunday on Fox.

Yes, Paul, one of the best point guards in NBA history, is an avid bowler. In fact, he claims he’s often approached on the streets and asked about his passion.

“There are a ton of people who don’t even say anything to me about basketball,” Paul said on the Fox telecast. “They come up to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, you bowl. We should go bowling.’”

Paul has been bowling since he was a kid growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., playing with his father and brother and friends. Soon after he entered the NBA in 2005, he established the Chris Paul Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports education, literacy and technology initiatives and other programs.

Around that time, Tom George, Paul’s then-agent at Octagon, spoke about Paul’s love of bowling with Tom Clark, who was the chief marketing officer for the United States Bowling Congress, the sport’s governing body. Clark, a former sports writer and editor at USA Today, signed Paul as a spokesperson for the USBC and organized a bowling event in Winston-Salem that raised awareness for Paul’s foundation.

- As reported by Tim Casey of Forbes on February 27th